El enfoque de cadenas productivas: la unión entre la lógica funcional y la

The analysis of the literary texts just proposed should have demonstrated that the idea of a natural degree of signification is at least very problematic. Literary figurativeness is hardly conceivable as the addition of some orna- mental effects to a literal statement.

Besides, in dealing with literature, it seems reasonable to recognize that one cannot provide a complete definition of it. However I think we can say clearly what literature is not: literature is a family of linguistic games that has nothing to do with other linguistic games, such as the referential com- munication. Literature may tell us something about a specific subject, but such a potentiality is not what makes the difference between a literary text and another enunciation. Therefore it is of no use to evaluate the sense of a literary text with regard to the alleged referential meaning of the words.25 By doing so, in fact, we would reduce expression to communication.

Even bees can communicate with their fellows, and they are able to give very sharp pieces of information. With a special dance, a bee informs the hive about where the food is and how much it is. It sounds odd, anyway, to say that bees can express something for aesthetic sake, and of course it would be dangerous for the hive to have an individual who “speaks” refer- ring to a fictional world, or in a figurative way.

Moreover, the ability of expression seems to depend on some specific human genes of the X chromosome (Rondal and Quiros Ramirez 2007: 7-9), which is said to be responsible for the right development of the mind. If we say that figural language needs a well-formed mind to be performed, then it is clear that animals without a real mind cannot produce figural messages. Since it seems bonded to a theory of mind, figurative expressions should be related (also) to a specific kind of neurons, which play a crucial role in the development of human beings (both by an ontogenetic and by a phyloge- netic standpoint), but seem to be less decisive for other animals: mirror- neurons.26 Such clues should be developed in another context, but it is

25

See, on this subject, Meyer 1983.

26 _{What seems to be definitively proved about mirror-neurons is that they are responsible}

for our understanding of the others’ intentional activity (see, for instance, Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2006: 121-127). It has been said that mirror-neurons activate an “as if” physical

important to remind that, since I share the basic theorists’ standpoints (in particular, the difference between theory of literature and epistemic dis- courses27), they are just back up clues.

However, if the mental activity of humans depends on these biological devices for the production of images, then it seems reasonable to claim that figural linguistic games are – so to say – more fundamental than the refer- ential ones. Therefore, it is improper to think of a basic degree of meaning for the sentences we utter, what is confirmed also by some contemporary linguists (see Lakoff and Johnson 1980).

The best conclusion, therefore, seems to be a redefinition of the ontol- ogy of the world (which is not the same of the thing-as-such, since the world is just phenomenal).28 We find a good outline of what I mean in Nietzsche’s first theorization about truth:

What is then truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomor- phisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, trans- posed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are. Truths are metaphors which have been worn out and so have lost all their sensible power, they are coins whose image is no more visible and so they are taken into account only as pieces of metal, nuggets, and no longer as coins (Nietzsche 1873: 361).

The words we commonly use, in order to define in an objective way the re- ality we live in, are not objective in turn. On the contrary, as De Saussure (1922: 86) clearly reminded, in some regards the words and the syntactical structures are always arbitrary and constructed, or better conventional: what they stands for is related to their form without any basic reason, nevertheless

circuit (Damasio 2003: 143-144), which in turn could explain the virtual dimension of liter- ary experience. To put oneself in someone else shoes is actually the most important activity of literary comprehension, both by the narrative and the poetic point of view. These remarks, together with the thesis which follows about the preeminence of figural language, could be the basis for a revaluation of Heidegger’s avowal that animals are poor-in-world.

27 _{See also Bachtin 1935: 159: “In a very different way [with regard to what actually hap-}

pens in literature] we have to consider the word in scientific thought. Here the relevance of the word is scarce. Mathematics and natural science do not know the world as a trend. […] The whole methodological equipment of mathematics and natural science is turned towards the control of a thing- and silent object”.

28 _{I therefore agree with what Alai (1994: 46) calls “metaphysical ontological realism”. See}

also Vasa (1981: 32): “That a world exists and has always existed without correlations to any possible intentionality is all but evident; in order to say that, one ought to have an almost self-contradictory confidence in some “essences”, in one single space and one single time, and in some “final laws” of matter”.

the system of language works as if the signs were necessary and the speaker perceives them as pre-existing and necessary resources of expression.

But once we recognized that language is not directly linked to the world, is it a logical inference the dismissal of any realistic knowledge, also of that of our classical view of science?29 Not really, and the reason is again explained by Nietzsche:

The falsehood of a judgment is not yet, for us, an objection to that judgment; it is here that our new language sounds maybe odder than ever. The question is how much that statement may promote and preserve life […] and we are fundamen- tally inclined to maintain that the falsest statements (among which we can find the a priori synthetic judgments) are for us the most necessary, and that without them it is impossible to keep in force the logical fictions, that without a compari- son of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live. We are inclined to assert that the renunciation of all the opinions which do not correspond to a being-as-such would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life (Nietzsche 1885: 9-10).

In conclusion, figurativeness is the original condition of our existence. Whatever we may conceive is therefore always pervaded by our rhetoric transcendental structures. Literature has little or no practical consequences, but for sure it teaches us to take the objective reference as another fictional construction which therefore cannot demand any privileged position in ab- solute. The reality of the world is objective only insofar it is unaware of the fundamental constructiveness of thought. Reference itself is not out there in an absolute way, so that it is actually very problematic and moves and changes with the aesthetic and linguistic rules we adopt. However, reference has a sort of supremacy in all the linguistic game of the enterprise of scien- tific knowledge, where its role is – so to say – to stand still. When we play science, we have to reduce the figural statements to the most literal ones. But when we play literature, we have only to enjoy the game.

29 _{It is the view of science that precedes the earthquakes of relativity and quantum mechan-}

ics, or at least that thinks these theories have almost no impact on our epistemic and practi- cal routines. The classical view of science, therefore, is characterized by an unchanged con- fidence in Newton’s description of the world; it is encouraged by the idea of the absolute potential improvement of measurements and determinations.

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We must be clear that, when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections. […] Quantum theory [...] provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.

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11)

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